The Sixth Potter
by meldahlie
Summary: The Potter family discover some things change, some things don't, and some things are definitely hereditary. Next-gen.
1. Chapter 1

The Sixth Potter

The Potter family discover some things change, some things don't, and some things are definitely hereditary. Next-gen.

~:~1. The Present ~:~

Senior Auror Harry Potter had a problem. It wasn't a violent escaped Death Eater. It wasn't a horde of rampaging Dementors. It wasn't even a nasty stack of Auror Department forms that needed to be filled in the day before yesterday. It was nine years old, red-headed, and sitting on the swing in the garden wearing coat, wellies and nightgown, refusing to get dressed for school.

"She's like I was," said Ginny, glancing out of the kitchen window as she levitated the breakfast dishes into the sink. "I sulked for two whole weeks after Ron went to Hogwarts; wouldn't play, wouldn't smile, wouldn't anything. Eventually, I presume Mum sent Ron a note to remind him to write to me."

"Did he?" Harry asked, his eyes still on the small stubborn figure in the garden, while he racked his brains for a memory of Ron writing anything that first term.

Ginny laughed. "It was all about you! I think he squeezed in a single sentence about the twins and Percy as a post-script, and completely failed to ask about Mum or Dad or I! Still," she shrugged. "Between that and Mum's threat that if I didn't learn long division I'd never be allowed to go to Hogwarts, I snapped out of the sulk."

Harry chuckled, and then sighed. "But you can't really expect the boys to do any more than send a overnight owl-card to say they arrived safely and Al's in Gryffindor, the very first morning of term."

Ginny's reply was drowned out by the splash of dishes plunging into the sink, and Harry carried on staring at their daughter. She wasn't swinging, just sitting there, wellies stuck rigidly out in front, defiance in every red-headed inch. Defiance, and–

Harry turned sharply, and jerked open the back door. There was something so like the small, miserable red-head who had buried herself in an enchanted diary out of sheer loneliness that he simply couldn't stand it any longer.

Lily must have heard the door, but she didn't move. Harry paused, and then walked round to the front of the swing. From this view, you could see that Lily's lip was stuck out nearly as far as her boots. It was not a promising aspect.

"Hello Lily?"

A long silence, and then a very sulky monosyllable. " 'lo."

The direct option seemed the best. "Lily," said Harry firmly, "I've got a problem."

For one millisecond, she looked up, and then jerked back to the rigid sulk without a word.

"Yes," Harry ploughed on. "I have a special Auror mission today, which I need to leave on soon-"

"WON'T go to school!" interrupted the passionate sulk. " 's boring!"

"I'm not asking you to go to school," Harry objected. "I'm asking you to come as my Auror team backup."

The statement seemed to sort of melt across Lily like a defrosting charm. A pair of big hazel eyes were turned up to him as the wellies sank back to the normal influence of gravity. "As a what?"

"My Auror team backup," Harry repeated gravely.

"But you have to go to work."

"I'm on a special assignment today," said Harry patiently, crouching down beside Lily as he had beside Al only the day before. "And I need you to come with me. So why don't you run on in and tell Mum that you need a nice clean dress and your hair brushed _immediate__ly, _while I send a couple of quick owls?"


	2. Chapter 2

~:~ 2. The Past ~:~

Senior Aurors cannot instantly re-arrange all their appointments, even when they were once The Boy Who Lived. It was half an hour, several owls and a couple of messenger Patronuses to the Minister later before Harry came hurrying downstairs to find Lily, dressed and cloaked, jigging up and down in the hall while Ginny tried to brush her hair.

"Quickly, Mum..." she urged, "quickly, quickly! Daddy, I'm all ready!"

Harry shook his head. "Jacket, Lily." The jigging stopped instantly, and Lily gave her school jacket a suspicious stare. "We're going on a reconnaissance and recruitment mission," Harry proceeded, reaching for his own Auror department coat that looked normal on the outside but had more pockets than Hagrid's overcoat on the inside. "So it's strictly muggle outfits only."

Now it was Ginny giving him the suspicious stare. "And if I say anything," she said with maternal resignation after a few moments, "I _will_ sound like my mother..."

Harry grinned. "Some things are hereditary, you know."

"And THAT," Ginny retorted, applying a swat instead of a good-bye kiss, "applies to you too! Get along with you! And take care!"

"Lily's going to take very good care of me, aren't you, Lily?"

Lily promptly gave him a hearty shove in the middle. "Now you're being silly, Daddy!"

"You see," said Harry solemnly to Ginny, "we shall be just fine."

~:~

"So where are we? Daddy? Where are we?"

Harry blinked in the rush of bright sunlight and questions rushing in on him after the crushing darkness of Side-Along Apparition. While Senior Aurors are highly proficient at apparating, Side-along took more energy than normal apparition, neither did he usually have such an earnest back-up. "This is..." He looked around carefully: conical metal bottle banks, a paper-recycling skip, and the rear loading doors of a supermarket. "Yes, this is where we're meant to be. Little Whinging, Surrey."

Lily's rapid surveillance of the surrounding recycling spot switched attention suddenly back to Harry. "Where you lived with the Dursleys?"

"That's right," Harry agreed. "That's why I wanted special company for an Auror recce here." He held out his hand, and Lily took it. "Come on, then, Auror back-up."

"We don't need to look round the supermarket itself," Harry explained as they crossed the car park and headed for the road entrance. "This was only built the year before I – left. Aunt Petunia used to use the shops in town, or Uncle Vernon would take us on Friday evenings over to the Waitrose in Great Whinging. Dudley used to like the café there, 'cause they served bigger biscuits. Bottle banks just make a good apparating point."

"Nobody minds that you're loitering?" Lily queried, with the air of one taking notes for future reference.

"Exactly. And all those crashes and smashes somewhat disguise the 'pop'. That's Stonewall High," Harry added, getting back to the recce mission with a gesture towards the playing fields they were walking past. "That was the comprehensive school I thought I was going to go to, before I knew I was going to Hogwarts."

Lily stopped abruptly and peered. Then she gave a dismissive sniff. "Looks boring."

Harry stopped too and gave Stonewall High a more careful look than he had for twenty-five years. "That's one adjective I'd never have thought of applying," he said slowly. "But you're entirely right."

So, Stonewall High comprehensive school was boring. The bus stop at which he and Dudley and Aunt Petunia had all got off at in haste the day Emmeline Vance, looking like a wild old woman dressed in green, had waved at him on a bus, was, however, not a bit boring. Lily circled it several times, somewhat suggesting a sniffer dog looking for explosives. "And you didn't know who she was? Not in the least?"

"Not in the least," Harry agreed.

"Hmmmm." The Auror back-up made a deeply thoughtful hum, stared very closely at the concrete post again as if any faint trace of magic might be left there, and then skipped back to Harry. "'s fun! Where next?"

The shop where Dedalus Diggle had bowed to him, which was still a china shop which still stocked the sort of hideous china model dogs they had used to buy for Aunt Marge every Christmas and birthday. Quoth Lily, nose flattened against the glass of the front window: "Ugly!"

The big Grunnings drill factory where Uncle Vernon had been a director, which was still a drill factory, although now called 'Easi-Fix.' "Aunt Petunia used to bring us here sometimes," Harry explained, "so Dudley could' wave to Daddy'. I always dreaded it; I had this horror that Uncle Vernon would peer out of his window and shout that I needed a haircut, and then everybody else would lean out of their windows to see. Dudley was never that interested, the bakery over the road was more in his scheme of things."

The spot in the street where a bald man in a long purple coat had shaken Harry's hand quite unexpectedly and then vanished, the week before Dudley's eleventh birthday. "I never found out who he was," said Harry. "I suppose I should ask McGonagall if she knows."

The barber shop which Harry must practically have kept in business on his own, with having more haircuts than all the other boys in his class put together. The opticians where they had never liked Harry, because he always had cheap NHS prescription spectacles and came back every year with each pair smashed up and held together by sellotape. The toy shop Harry had never been allowed inside. The train station at which Aunt Marge had arrived and departed every holiday, leaving a trail of devastation and nipped porters behind her each time. All, in Lily's view, were "Intr'sting" – also time and energy consuming. Harry's watch and Lily announced simultaneously that it was lunchtime, right outside the MacDonalds on the High Street.

"Did you used to come here, too?" Lily demanded, slurping at her Coca-Cola with an enthusiasm that would have done credit to James on a bad day.

Harry shook his head. "Sometimes if Dudley thought he wouldn't survive the bus ride home, I would wait in the street with the shopping while Aunt Petunia came in to get him a doughnut or packet apple pie, but I didn't come in. The only cafe I ever went to before Hagrid turned up was the one at the zoo on Dudley's birthday."

"The day you set a boa constrictor loose?"

Harry glanced round slightly at the surrounding muggles, for Lily's tone was rather strident, but nobody was listening and, frankly, who would have believed it if they heard? "Yes," he agreed.

Lily chewed silently for a moment. "Do you think it got home to Brazil?"

"I don't know," said Harry. "I used to be quite certain it would have, but – maybe it did."

"I 'spect it found everywhere quite changed when it got home," said Lily sagely. "All the trees in the rainforest would have grown."

Leaving aside the fact that it had been raised in the zoo, Harry reflected, everything might have changed wherever boa constrictors came from in Brazil – or it might not. In Little Whinging, it wasn't so much that the trees had grown, as that they _hadn't. _The same forbidding trunks of lollipop horse chestnuts still stood around the tennis courts, dropping conkers in the road; the same scrawny pair of saplings grew on the traffic island at the top of the high street; and the beech and lime trees as he and Lily walked out towards Privet Drive had not, apparently, altered by a single twig.

It was a strange feeling. He had used a Time-Turner, he had wandered about in Pensieve-d memories, but neither of those were as much like time travel as this. Here was the past, unaltered, and he was walking in it. It felt as if the only thing that stopped the past simply sucking him back into it was the small red-head now skipping happily along beside him. Harry took her by the hand to cross the road – not just because of the traffic.

"Is that your old school?" Lily enquired as they got off the Pelican crossing. Harry nodded. The primary school hadn't changed either: the same low brick buildings set in bald concrete playgrounds, the same weary trees around the climbing frames. The stories and drawings stuck up on the classroom windows could surely not be the same, but they looked it. Around the side, the school kitchens were just the same, although the graffiti of Dudley's gang had been painted over with what James had once convinced Al were called 'Murials'.

"Those are probably the same dustbins I was trying to jump behind," Harry said, peering over the railings. "And then there I was, up on the roof."

Lily looked back from peering earnestly through the railings. "Why?" she demanded, looking puzzled.

"Why was I trying to get away? I was hiding from Dudley and gang. They used to… hitting me was their idea of fun."

Lily frowned, clearly struggling to reconcile the actions of the past with the hardly met but faithful sender of Christmas cards and birthday book tokens. "People change, Lily," said Harry gently. "Places mightn't, people do. Come on."

Past the school was the corner shop, where they had always had to stop for sweets; beyond the shop was Magnolia Drive and the playpark. Everything here was perfectly familiar: the corners he'd avoided Dudley's gang at; the rubbish bins he had searched through for newspapers the summer Voldemort had returned; the low front hedges Dudley had used to like to empty Harry's school bag into, leaving him to rummage frantically in the leaves and rubbish at the base for his pencils and homework.

"They're the same swings," Harry pointed out as they walked past the playpark. "When Uncle Vernon used to bring Dudley and I here on Saturdays when we were small, I was never allowed on them. Once I was at Hogwarts and they didn't care where I was, I used to come and sit there. The house opposite is where my teacher lived, the one whose wig I turned blue accidentally. Aunt Petunia dragged me along to apologise when she went deliver the cheque for the replacement wig school insisted on."

Lily bestowed a cursory glance at the small, prim house. "It looks like a teacher's house," she said, in tones which were quite definitely not a commendation of the house or occupation.

"Some teachers are nice, Lily," Harry objected. "Like Neville."

"He's a professor," Lily retorted. "They're nice. Teachers aren't."

"That's Lilac Road," said Harry, admitting defeat. "Dudley's friends Malcolm and Gordon used to live up there, and Piers Polkiss in Quince Crescent."

"Were they chasing you too?" Lily demanded abruptly. "Behind the school dustbins?"

Harry paused, and decided honesty was the best policy. "Yes."

Lily sniffed. "Don't want to see."

"Oh, Lily-" Harry gave up, and found himself chuckling at the indignant tilt to his daughter's nose. "You can look at that house on the corner, anyway. That was where little Mark Evans used to live. Aunt Petunia _never_ spoke to them, because they had the same surname as her maiden name–"

"And Grandma Lily's?" the second Lily Potter interrupted.

"Yes, and then Dudley's gang beat up Mark."

"Because of the name?"

"Er- I don't think Dudley's gang ever thought that much about anything," Harry replied, somewhat nonplussed. "They just – picked on people."

Lily was frowning again. "He doesn't now, does he?" she enquired anxiously, a few houses further on.

"Dudley? No," said Harry firmly. "People change, Lily, and in a bit we'll come to the place where Dudley started changing. There's a funnier house, though. That was Mr Prentice's. He got a company car one year that was even newer than Uncle Vernon's brand new company car. For months, Uncle Vernon drove to work the other way round the block so he didn't have to go past it."

That set Lily laughing; bright, sparkly laughter which lifted Harry's heart as they turned down Magnolia Crescent. "This is where I first met the Knight Bus," he explained, gesturing along the quiet road and wondering just how many lamp-posts and front hedges and cars and even solid, non-magical pebble-dashed houses had had to jump out of the way of Ernie Prang's amazing driving that night. "And down the side of Number Two's garage, here..." – they squeezed into the narrow alleyway, now rather overgrown with Virginia creeper all over the garage and fence – "I first saw Sirius, and the two Dementors attacked Dudley and I."

Lily stared all round, eyes wide. Then she marched over and took Harry's hand, with the definite air of one giving reassurance, rather than looking for it. "It seems safe now. And I bet he was glad to see you."

Glad? Harry paused, his mind suddenly staggering from what he'd meant to explain about Dudley and repentance and people changing and all that, to the question of what Sirius must have thought, crouched in that alleyway as Padfoot. Glad, perhaps yes – Sirius had diverted a long way out of his mission of revenge to try and get a glimpse of Harry – but perhaps also a bit startled? After all, he, Harry, would not like to be out after dark and suddenly meet Teddy Lupin galloping rebelliously along the street, dragging his trunk behind him. Not even now, when his godson was of age; certainly not when Teddy had been a very innocent thirteen. And not – Harry gulped at the sheer idea – not if he had not seen Teddy in twelve years. No wonder Sirius had known who he was. Green eyes were probably not detectable under dim street lights. Sirius had seen James, just as Harry had, nine months later.

"Daddy..." said a firm and insistent voice from the present. "Where next?"

There was only one place left, unless you counted the telephone wiring box where Dudley and gang had used to sit and smoke. Up Wisteria Walk, and into Privet Drive. The road sign hadn't changed, the low front walls and trim hedges and manicured lawns were all the same.

Lily counted off the house numbers. "Nine, eight, seven, six, five – that one hasn't got a number, Daddy."

That – what?

Number Two was the same, Number Six even still had its runner beans in the same spot in the back garden – but Number Four, Privet Drive was gone.

A house stood there. A big, double-fronted house with two bay windows and a conservatory and a glassed-in porch and a loft conversion: a house with the sort of plump, almost bloated look houses get when they have been extended to the limit. It was a house at Number Four – but it wasn't 'Number Four, Privet Drive.'

Not the house Harry had grown up in, not the house he had hated, not the house he had been such an unwelcome occupant of – Harry found that he was staring, found that he was actually smiling, smiling, smiling. The new house between Number Two and Number Six had such a happy air, despite its plumpness. It wasn't prim or neat or even very well-kept, in one way. The hydrangea bushes in the hedge, for one thing, did not seem to have been pruned for several years. But two boys' bicycles lay companionably under them. Through the glassed-in porch and the open-plan hall (the cupboard under the stairs was gone altogether), he could see a Wendy house in the back garden, where the greenhouse had been, and the awful tree Aunt Marge's Ripper had chased him up seemed to have been cut down and turned into the base for a picnic table. Uncle Vernon's precious front lawn had been eaten into by a wide brick driveway. A mini-van for transporting very large families was parked on it, and a wobbly hopscotch pattern had been added in pink and yellow chalk. Bright curtains hung at all the upstairs windows, slightly crooked as if careless children had yanked them back and no-one had rushed to angrily and mathematically re-set the corners. A large teddy-bear reclined on one bay window ledge downstairs, a big ginger cat smiled at them from the other – gone the horror of anything more exuberant than a tortoise. Even the shining brass '4' on the door, which Aunt Petunia had spent hours polishing each week and had always reflected Harry's face to seem all scar and nothing else, was gone. The house, as Lily had said, had no number. It wasn't hung up on being 'Number Four'. It was itself, and happy with it.

"Is that where you lived?"

"Er... yes," said Harry. "And no. It used to be," he added somewhat lamely, as Lily looked confused. "The basic house is sort of still there – you can just about see the seam in the pebble-dash where they've doubled it in size. And that was where my bedroom was – it looks like it's the stairs to the loft now. The other front bedroom, the one with the blue football curtains, was the guest room where Aunt Marge used–"

He broke off. Lily had lost interest in a vanished past, and had walked on a few paces to stare at the side of the house. "Daddy," she said, in a puzzled tone. "They've got their Quidditch hoop stuck sideways on the wall..._"_

The sudden and insistent chiming of Fabian Prewett's old watch, with a set of loud and irregular bongs which indicated an urgent appointment rather than a particular hour, saved Harry from bursting into fits of laughter in the middle of a quiet and respectable suburban street. "It's a basketball hoop, Lily," he gasped out with as straight a face as he could manage. "You stand on the ground and throw the ball in. And, er – it's time for us to go. Not home yet," Harry added as Lily looked disappointed. "Just one last place."

He looked back once as Lily dragged him enthusiastically off by the hand, skipping happily as she went. The strange house was still there. Number Four, Privet Drive was gone forever. Harry felt he had never before appreciated just how beautiful early autumn in Surrey could be.


	3. Chapter 3

~:~ 3. The Future ~:~

"Daddy," said Lily as they reached the end of Privet Drive. "That cat looked at us." She pointed to a large grey tabby sauntering along the pavement in front of them.

"Really?" asked Harry seriously.

Lily nodded. "Really. Oh! She's just gone over the wall! See – now she's peeping back at us again."

Harry looked. "She does seem to be watching us."

"Do you think-?" Lily flushed with enthusiasm. "Do you think we should _follow_ her?"

Harry considered. "Discretely," he agreed, as sincerely as he could. The Special Auror Mission accordingly followed a large grey tabby cat along Wisteria Walk. Lily watched its every move intently; Harry watched far more idly, in his suddenly buoyant mood remembering Sirius startling cats the morning they had walked from Grimmauld Place to King's Cross. Sirius had been so happy to be out, even as Padfoot – perhaps even more as Padfoot. That great black dog had _liked_ to run. They passed the entrance to the alleyway again, and Harry realised that hiding down there had not been Padfoot's only trip to Little Whinging.

"Go to all the old crowd," Dumbledore had ordered Sirius that night in the hospital wing after Cedric's death. And though it had meant nothing to Harry then, with his mind fixed on not thinking about what had just been, and not wanting Sirius to go, one of those names would have sent Sirius to Little Whinging. The image of Buckbeak with Sirius whirling down over these quiet respectable roofs was so clear Harry almost found himself looking up to see them. And then – had they just gone straight away to the right house? Or – Sirius must have had some idea of Petunia's address to come to Little Whinging at all, the first time. Harry wondered whether the inexplicably brown, scorched patch on the front hedge which Uncle Vernon had complained about all that hot summer had, in fact, been a present from Padfoot.

"Daddy!" Lily had stopped dramatically. "She's gone in _there...!"_

Harry looked down at his daughter. Yes, the picture of misery from this morning was quite completely gone. Now to keep it so.

"Well," he said calmly, gesturing at the small, neat-ish house with thick net curtains at the windows and a cat flap in the front door through which the tabby had vanished. "Let's follow her."

If Lily's eyes had almost popped at all the 'intr'sting' places earlier, they were definitely going to now. She followed Harry up the drive at such close distance he was only glad he didn't have robes on, or they would both have tripped up. At the doorstep, Harry steered Lily forwards. "Go on. You knock."

Advance warning had been carried. The door popped open instantly and an old lady in carpet slippers, with her grey hair swept messily into a skew-if hairnet took one look at Harry, one down at Lily and cried: "You're here!"

"Daddy!" Lily turned fiercely. "You knew something!" She swung back to the door and stuck out one hand in rather indignant greeting. "Daddy didn't say we were coming to visit someone. I'm Lily Potter."

"And I'm Arabella Figg," said Mrs Figg, shaking hands gently. "I used to keep an eye on your Daddy when he was little." She bent down as Lily humphed, and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Do you think we could let him have a cup of tea, or has he been so bad we ought to leave him out in the garden?"

The inside of Mrs Figg's house was as unchanged as much of Little Whinging, and still so un-nervingly like Perkin's old tent that Harry wasn't sure whether he felt like he was seven years old and dumped here by Aunt Petunia, or seventeen years old and on the run from Voldemort. He focused very hard on the clutter of china ornaments and cat photos on the bookshelf, to try and tip the balance towards the younger sensation.

"If you have this chair," said Mrs Figg, steering him towards a familiar, overstuffed chintz armchair, "and then Lily over here … on the hearthrug. There now."

For one moment, Lily forgot her indignation and looked round at Harry with uncertainty at her odd seat. But there was no time even to nod reassuringly, before Mrs Figg picked up a large wicker basket and plopped it down on the rug beside Lily. "They're safer at floor level, if you don't mind."

Lily peered into the basket. "Oh! Kittens! Dozens of them!"

"Eleven." Mrs Figg picked up a kitten in either hand, and put them down on Lily. "The latest litter of Dusky's; she was the one who saw you coming up the road."

"You didn't used to breed cats," Harry observed.

"Started during the war," said Mrs Figg, still unpacking kittens onto Lily's lap. "Took in a couple of strays, cats or kneazles, couldn't tell. One of them was a queen, had kittens within the week. I've done it ever since. It's nice to have some company about the place, more than Mundungus Fletcher's odd visits."

"I'll come and visit you," said Lily earnestly, holding a small wriggling tabby kitten up to her nose and squinting at it. "Lots!"

Mrs Figg smiled. "That's very kind of you, but I expect you're meant to be in school some of the time."

Lily scrunched up her face. "School's boring," she said dismissively. "Daddy and I are on a special Auror mission today." She scooped up a different kitten. "Much more intr'sting."

"We should have come to see you long ago," said Harry apologetically. "It's just … Little Whinging isn't exactly a place I come to often-"

"I shouldn't think so," said Mrs Figg briskly. "But you'll have a cup of tea while you're here?"

She bustled out, and Harry watched Lily now tickling a grey kitten with black feet as it squirmed on her lap. Probably at nine years old, he would not have been that interested in kittens. The arrival of Crookshanks in his life when he had been thirteen had been quite trying enough – but kittens might have been a bit more interesting than old photos of them. Or maybe not, for Mrs Figg's cats had never particularly seemed to like him, at least, not in the way the eleven kittens seemed to be liking Lily. Maybe he had always carried an air of having nearly killed the cat when riding his first broomstick aged one.

As if to confirm this point, Dusky, if that was her name, sauntered into the room, took a contented glance at the not-still-life of 'Lily and Kittens on Hearth Rug', and sat down to stare Harry out of countenance.

"Shoo," said Mrs Figg firmly, reappearing with a tray of mismatched tea cups and shifting Dusty with one foot. "Here we are … if you could take your milk quickly … thank you." Mrs Figg whisked the jug off Harry before he'd had time to add more than a trickle to his tea, and handed it, along with a large saucer, to Lily. "You need it more than Daddy," she said, nodding at the kittens. "Feeding time."

The kittens tumbled and scrambled and climbed vigorously over each other, to Lily's squeals of delight. "They do that up the curtains, too," said Mrs Figg. "And along the bannisters, and all over the bookcase. But you have to be careful with mantelpieces. They like to run along and dabble their paws in anything up there. It doesn't matter for me; all I've got is lavender pot-pourri, but if they start digging in Floo Powder, they'll be off to places good pussies don't go before you can say Two Dragons." She sat slowly onto the other armchair, and picked up her own teacup with a smile at Harry. "Just like old times."

The tea still tasted as if it had been brewed in a cabbage instead of a teapot, but the cake was–?

"Different to the ones you used to have," Harry remarked conversationally.

"Humph," said Mrs Figg. "That's because it's fresh! I went out and bought it this morning when your ow- when I thought I might be having visitors. Mundungus Fletcher used to bring the others, as a sort of gift! No knowing how long they might have been hanging around looking for a business 'opportoonity' before he got his hands on them!"

Harry had a sudden vision of Dung running down the steps of a house that looked remarkably like Number 12, Grimmauld Place, clutching not the family silver but a large iced chocolate cake, with Kreacher and a cast-iron frying pan in hot pursuit.

"That was, er- kind of him," he fumbled. "To part with anything for free would be quite an effort on Dung's part."

Mrs Figg shrugged. "It _was_ because of you! Thought he was 'doing his bit', coming up with cakes. Quite a lot of people envied me the opportunity to look after you, you know – though what sort of time you'd have had with Minerva MacGonagall I don't know!"

Harry swallowed a gasp of shocked laughter and a gulp of scalding tea together. "I-er-er! I don't know either." He pondered. "Erm... she always used to press me with ginger newts and sharp comments at school."

"That's Minerva," Mrs Figg agreed. "Tabby cat with spectacles." She watched Lily and the kittens in silence for a minute, and then observed irrelevantly: "They're a little bit younger than I usually let them go at."

"She's lonely with the boys away at Hogwarts," said Harry equally irrelevantly.

Mrs Figg nodded. "I remember the feeling. It's no fun being the one left behind when your brother's off having a ball with ghosts and enchanted corridors and singing Hats and who knows what else. Of course," she added, "I knew by then that I wasn't going at all."

"That's what James used to tease Al with," said Lily, sitting up from the hearthrug. "Then he started saying he'd be a Slytherin. But he's gone into Gryffindor yesterday, like everybody else."

"Ah..." Mrs Figg nodded again. "Houses do run in families. Mine was a Gryffindor too."

"I didn't know you had a brother," said Harry, surprised. There had certainly never been any evidence in Mrs Figg's house of anyone else in her life apart from the cats, not even Mr Figg.

"Well, I could hardly show you his picture, could I?" Mrs Figg retorted, a trifle belligerently. "It moved!" She shrugged a little. "He was a great one for movement and adventure, Gerard. But not cats. He went off to Hogwarts and then he saved up his Sickles and went off to America to see the white buffalo hunts, and then he went off to the continent to fight against Grindelwald. We never saw him again."

"Al and James are coming home at Christmas," Lily interjected somewhat anxiously.

"I stayed home and married Herbert," Mrs Figg continued, staring into her teacup as if she was reading the past in the tea leaves. "He was a good man, Herbert, not into adventures, but he had that asthma, so he wasn't into cats either. Eventually it took him off. And then I said to myself, 'Arabella, if you've got nobody left, there's nobody left to tell you what you can't do.' So I went out and bought myself my first cat."

"Tibbles," said Harry with sudden memory.

Mrs Figg looked up and beamed at him. "Tibbles," she agreed, "and then-?"

Harry racked his brains for the others. "Snowy, and Mr Paws, and then, er, Tufty..."

Their old owner joined in with listing them off. "I always knew you were an intelligent boy," she said, nodding happily. "I used to feel so bad, having to bore you stiff whenever you came here, but if you'd gone back to those Dursleys saying you'd had a lovely day watching television and eating flapjacks, you wouldn't have been crossing my threshold again. And then where would my orders from Dumbledore have gone?"

"To places good pussies don't go," said the voice from the kitten basket.

Arabella Figg broke into peals of old lady laughter. "You _are_ like your Granny! Red-headed and full of it and madly fond of cats..."

"Grandma's not that fond of cats," Lily objected.

"Maybe not your Granny Weasley," said Mrs Figg, "but your Granny Potter was. They had one of my cats when your dad was little. All I could afford to give them for a wedding present," she added aside to Harry.

"Oh." Lily sighed longingly, and turned with a regretful expression back to the basketful of kittens.

Harry felt distinctly that the time had come to go. He drained his tea and stood up. "Come on, Lily. Which one of them are we taking with us?"

Two huge hazel eyes turned up to him from the hearthrug. "W-what?"

"Which one of them are we taking with us?" Harry repeated.

Mrs Figg caught Lily's gaping stare and nodded encouragingly. "They need a good home."

"It was an Auror recruitment mission," Harry pointed out gently. "I think our house will be seeming … much too big until Christmas, if we don't have a sixth Potter romping around in it. So you'll have to pick your favourite. I don't think we can expect Mummy to cope with more than one kitten arriving at a time."

If the explanation this morning had worked like a defrosting charm, this one was a veritable Cheering charm. The corners of Lily's smile rose almost to behind her ears, and she gazed back into the basket with open mouth.

Harry crouched down. "Which one, then?"

Lily frowned in thought. "That's one's like James," she said, picking up the big tabby kitten and plonking it to one side. "All pushing and shoving and showing off. And..." she shuffled a ginger one to one side as well. "Too much like Aunt Hermione's old Crookshanks … and that one's too shy, he needs to stay with his mum … This one!"

She seized the grey kitten with the black socks and scrambled to her feet as if any hesitation might lose the opportunity.

"He's a pretty one," said Mrs Figg, creaking up from her armchair. "Now, I usually send them out in a travel box, but I didn't have enough warning today. Do you think you can carry him home safely?"

Harry considered. It didn't look at the moment if anything short of Dark Magic would separate Lily and kitten, but in Side-Along Apparition you could never be sure. "Do you think he'd be all right in a coat pocket? If we could apparate from your back garden?"

The problem wasn't so much getting the kitten in the pocket, as getting Lily to let go of him. "You can hold the outside of the pocket," Harry promised, as they squeezed out of the back door as a tightly locked trio, with Mrs Figg flapping them out from behind. "He's not going to suffocate. And the very minute we're home-"

At this point Lily suddenly let go, and as the kitten vanished with a jerk into the depths of Harry's inside coat pocket, she turned and flung her arms round Mrs Figg's waist.

"I'll come and see you again! Soon! Whenever Daddy next has an Auror mission here!"

"Christmas," said Harry, taking a firm grip on Lily for apparition. "I'm pretty certain I've another special Auror mission to Little Whinging booked round about Christmas." He nodded over Lily's head. "Thank you – for the tea and cake, and – everything."

Another pressing crush of apparition – another rush of light – another rush of questions.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Is he all right?! Is he all right?!"

Before Harry could protest, his pocket had been picked and Lily with kitten was pounding up their own front steps to the just opening door. "Mummy! We got a cat! And I've thought of a name for him now!"

She held up the grey kitten triumphantly. "Ravenpaws! He's Ravenpaws! 'Cause he's got black feet!"

The special Auror back-up and the sixth Potter paused just long enough to each receive a maternal kiss, and then tore off into the house. "Show you everywhere..." a vanishing voice echoed back. No doubt about it. Somebody was cheered up.

Harry slipped off his jacket, and gave Ginny an enquiring smile.

"Go on!" said Ginny, administering a welcome home kiss. "Say it! Say it! She inherited the taste in pet names from me too!"

~:~:~The End~:~:~


End file.
